Vista vs. MCE2005

[shizniticus]

I've read that some people consider MCE2005 to be superior to Vista MCE and was just wondering why?

Also, does MCE rip DVD's to hard disk for playback or will I need a separate application for accomplishing that, such as Slysoft's AnyDVD-HD?

[ilovejedd]

I'd like to know the answer to the first question, too.

To the second, I'm pretty sure you'll have to get a separate application to rip your DVDs (I'm assuming they're copyright protected) to your PC. With Microsoft kowtowing to the RIAA and MPAA, it's kinda unlikely that they'll included DVD ripping as a part of their OS.

[Shinigami-Sama]

uhh
microsoft movie maker might be able too
but I'm not sure

but you're better off with rip it for me

[db2450]

#1)
The only reson I could see why MCE 2005 could be better then Vista's WMC, is that MCE 2005, which is XP, has better compatibility with encoders and decoders. FFDshow has frequent issues for me on Vista, but for right now a fresh install seems to fix any problems.

Also, I am pretty sure Vista is more of a resource hog then MCE 2005, but if your running a dedicated media box, that should be no probelm.

#2)
I haven't been able to find anything in Vista's WMC to rip DVD's

[rebkell]

I'm having problems with Vista right now, I've been running for the last 3 months and it's actually been very stable, but lately, Media Center is very sluggish, I can't get around in the video library very well, mouse clicks and remote commands can take from a couple of seconds to what seems like a minute to take.(of course by then you've clicked or pushed another button and you have to wait on it to take effect)

has anybody experienced media center slowing down and becoming just slow, it really seems to be slow when I'm browsing the video library. My library has been increasing nightly, as I record shows and I create a folder for each night, I've heard that the thumbnails might be a problem. The files in the folders start out as mpg which are generated by videoredo from an dvr-ms file. Then I create the d2v file and ac3 file, then an avs file gets added, then a couple of mp4 files(audio and video) and then the final muxed output from the muxing of the audio and video, and I may record two to four shows a night. I've got folders for nearly every night since the middle of january.

Media Center seems to just get slower and slower as I add more files, which may just be a coincidence, not sure. When I first start up Media Center, everything seems to run very smooth and fast, but after I play a video, and go back to the library to choose something else, it usually slows to a crawl and takes a long time to just navigate to the folders to pick another video to view. Anybody have any similar experiences and have any suggestions on what the problem might be?

[jeffy]

@rebkell: (ideas only):
Corrupt datastore?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947464/en-us

Thumbnails issue?
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2835364&SiteID=50

[rebkell]

@rebkell: (ideas only):
Corrupt datastore?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947464/en-us

Thumbnails issue?
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2835364&SiteID=50

Thanks for the links, the conversation at the microsoft forum sure sounded familiar, guess I'll generate some thumbnail jpgs for my folders and see how it goes, I may actually have both problems you linked to.

[rebkell]

I put the thumbnails in every folder and deleted the db file, it seemed to help, but it's still having problems. I'm beginning to suspect that it's having problems with the mp4 files. I used to encode all my files and mux them into mkv's, but I changed and started saving them all in the mp4 container. It seems like Vista MCE has no problem with the folders containing strictly mkv, but it seems to struggle big time with the folders that contain mp4 only files.

I'll play around some more, and once again thanks for the links.

I found an interesting conversation here: http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=94874&forum_id=27
I'll try the registry hack, it may solve my problems, when I put the folder.jpg in the folders, I can fly across all the directories now, so it definitely helped in that aspect, and I noticed when I opened up a folder(directory) with only mkv files, that the thumbnails displayed instantly and everything was still zipping along, but when I opened up a folder with mp4 files, it got really sluggish.